After years at the helm, Stuart Ashworth reflects on his career at one of Scotlands most well-known agricultural organisations.
Many of those involved with farming have an aversion to numbers and statistics, but that is not the case for Stuart Ashworth, who has recently retired as chief economist at Quality Meat Scotland (QMS).
During 19 years in post with the red meat levy body, his even-handed economic analysis has gained the respect of farmers, processors and retailers.
And maintaining a grasp of what are often volatile markets has become his hallmark.
Speaking just ahead of standing down from QMS at the end of March, Stuart says: "I always had a real enthusiasm for numbers. I love a good data set, not for itself but for what it can tell you.
"The depth to which you can go and the speed with which you can go there have changed remarkably since I started my career and that is really exciting."
The Dales
The fascination with numbers goes back to Stuarts schooldays at Harrogate Grammar School.
He was brought up on a small dairy farm in Nidderdale. It was typical of hundreds of family farms in the Dales in the post-war period. Stuarts first involvement, apart from helping with the seasonal tasks, came in 1973 with the introduction of value added tax (VAT).
Stuart says: "I was still at school, but because my father knew I enjoyed numbers and was trying to encourage an interest in accountancy as a potential career he thought I would be the ideal person to fill in the VAT returns.
"I did it for years and apart from giving me a sense of responsibility, it gave me a very good idea of what the income was from the farm.
"I could see how hard my mother and father were working to make a living from 40 dairy cows and some sheep on an 80-acre mixed tenancy farm.
"It was obvious to me that it would be impossible to gain another living out of the farm. I could have taken a job off farm and worked hard on the farm part-time, but I thought my future lay elsewhere.
"Fortunately, my father was open-minded and had always urged me to take education as far as I could."
Stuart set off for Newcastle University to study for a degree in agricultural economics. His first employment after graduation in 1979 was an economist with West of Scotland College of Agriculture, now part of Scotlands Rural College (SRUC).
"I spent 50 per cent of my time lecturing and 50 per cent on research and consultancy work that was, by the millennium, increasingly moving from primary agriculture to the wider rural economy. It was an interesting mix of work and I enjoyed it, but in 2003 the chance of joining QMS came along.
"QMS was a fledgling organisation at the time and I found the opportunity to define my new role very appealing. Part of it, of course, was analysing statistics but I soon found that the ability to communicate was very important. Two things helped me with this.
"Firstly, as a farmers son I had done all the jobs such as making silage, dehorning calves, clipping sheep and even cleaning out slurry tankers. This gave me an empathy with producers. Secondly, my college lecturing experience was a great help. Explaining a topic to a class of 30 students soon teaches you how to make a subject relatable," says Stuart.
From the outset he was very keen to make enterprise costings more relevant to Scotland and to extend them to produce net margins so that the receipt of farm support payments did not mask whether or not an enterprise was fundamentally viable.
Stuart says: "The findings are presented annually in a QMS enterprise profitability document.
"It is intended to make it easier for producers to benchmark their performance against other.
Consistency
Consistency
"It has been notable over the years that the top 25 per cent of producers in every category have a number of basic strengths in common. In simple terms, they consistently get an animal on the ground, keep it alive and then, most importantly, sell it to the best advantage.
"Often, they do it at lesser costs but behind these simple messages there are admittedly many complexities."
He praises the successive monitor farm programmes for opening minds to the opportunities for productivity gains. When asked whether the gap between the best producers and the rest has widened over the years, Stuart ponders his response but agrees.
"The gap between best and the average has been getting wider," he says.
"Progress can be measured on an exponential curve. The most entrepreneurial 'get it' and adopt new ideas rapidly.
"Others do not follow until they see if an idea works and hence one of the strengths or values of the monitor farm programme.
"The speed of progress tends to favour innovative and entrepreneurial minds."
Farming policies of course have a big influence, but despite being a non-departmental Government body, this is an area out with QMS's remit. Stuart's task over the years has been simply to supply all interested parties with the information required to allow decisions to be made.
He says: "I quickly learned the importance of language when dealing with the entire red meat supply chain. For instance, describing rising farming gate prices as 'improving' works from a farmer's perspective, but a processor working on tight margins might, of course, look on it differently.
"This is why I always describe price changes as either increasing or decreasing, leaving the reader to decide whether that is a good or bad thing. There is a fine dividing line between the interests of producers, processors, policy makers and consumers.
"My primary objective has always been to provide impartial analysis from which business decisions can be made.
"Levy boards are there to help the whole industry towards a sustainable future. In my opinion, that cannot be done without understanding the economic background."
Optimism
Optimism
When asked if he left the red meat industry with optimism or pessimism, Stuart says: "I am a glass half full sort of person. I am optimistic, but only if the industry faces up to certain challenges.
"Each link in the supply chain must work with all the others sharing information so as to deliver positive margins for each link in the chain, otherwise there will be no encouragement for investment and our industry will shrink.
"It needs a robust research and communication base to find, demonstrate and encourage the application of the new technologies and the uptake of the science which is coming out of our core research bodies such as Moredun, SRUC and the James Hutton Institute.
"Our biggest challenge, though, lies in the words of Oscar Wilde who wrote, 'Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing'.
Sustainability
Sustainability
"Consumers are increasingly interested in where their food comes from and how it is produced. The need to explain the significant role that UK livestock farming can and does play in ethically producing high quality safe food and in delivering sustainable farming practices that contribute to environmental enhancement and the target of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century has never been more important. We need to get consumers to value food and the way it is produced in the UK.
"If we can get these things right, namely improving the economic efficiency of our businesses through innovative science and building demand by consumers valuing the way in which we produce meat in the UK, then the future is bright."
